Jianjun Chen, PhD, is Professor and Chair, Department of Systems Biology at City of Hope. He is also the deputy director of the Center for RNA Biology and Therapeutics. Before that, he had been serving as an Associate Professor of Cancer Biology at University of Cincinnati College of Medicine from January 2015 through October 2017, and as an Assistant Professor of Medicine at University of Chicago from January 2009 through January 2015. Prof. Chen received his PhD degree from Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China, and then conducted postdoc training with Janet D. Rowley, MD, at University of Chicago. Prof. Chen is a scholar of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (2017) and Researcher of the Year, Pamela B. Katten Memorial Leukemia Research Foundation Award (2014). He also received The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Scholar CDP Achievement Award in 2022.
Prof. Chen is an internationally renowned pioneer and leading expert in the field of RNA cancer epigenetics (or epitranscriptomics). The discoveries from his group have demonstrated the functional importance of RNA modifications (especially m6A modification) and the associated modulators in cancer initiation, progression, metastasis, and drug resistance, cancer stem cell self-renewal, cancer metabolism and tumor immune evasion.